There are a gazillion things that have been roasting on my mind for the past week and I can't get them all out at once. That logically means that some will be lost forever.

I went camping with my school last Thursday and Friday at a beach nearby. It was not what westerners would think of as camping. We stayed in something similar to a hostel, cooked food in a kitchen and had bathrooms and showers with running water. I didn't mind because the last thing I wanted to do was run around helping students pitch tents. We spent almost all of our time playing on the beach and throwing each other into the freeeeezing ocean.

The night after our first day, I told the students that I wasn't coming back next semester. They had no idea and were understandably shocked. It made me really, really depressed. I have seen these kids almost every day for the past two years. I know them so well that I think of them more like my little brothers and sisters rather than my students. Thinking of leaving them forever makes me so sad...

The next morning while we were on a walk down the beach one student gashed his thumb open on a rock. The crater in his thumb was deep and part of his smashed thumbnail was stabbing right into it. Later when we returned from the walk I got out the tweezers and nail clippers and attempted to dig the nail out. Poor kid. Another teacher was holding him down and the kid was really yelling because I was really digging. Eventually after the whole thing was over he almost passed out. I must say that I'd make a great surgeon (other than all those years at med school). In an emergency I have no qualms about doing what has to be done even if it means blood and guts. Maybe that's what comes after working in a hospital for four years.